


it's fine.

by lulla_lunekjaer



Category: The Ever Afters Series - Shelby Bach
Genre: Chase Needs a Hug, Chase always needs a hug tbh, Claustrophobia, Gen, Hemophobia, Lena also needs a hug, Ostiophobia, Panic Attacks, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-02
Updated: 2016-04-02
Packaged: 2018-05-26 07:46:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 561
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6229774
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lulla_lunekjaer/pseuds/lulla_lunekjaer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In Of Giants and Ice, Lena says, "Uh-oh. I forgot about that. He's afraid of bones," in response to Chase freaking out in the breadbox, and as I very much doubt that pre-OGAI Chase would willingly tell people about his phobia, here's a fic about it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	it's fine.

**Author's Note:**

> For two people in a Triumvirate together, they don't interact in canon as much as they should, and when they do, it has to be from Rory's perspective as it is in fact a first-person book. 
> 
> I want these two to be best friends outside of Rory and have sibling moments and I love them all.

She had been in the backseat of the car when her parents died. She was four, she shouldn’t remember much, but she remembers it well enough. Glass, her mother’s blank eyes, people shouting, blood. There was blood everywhere. Some of it was hers, some of it wasn’t.

Lena slept well in the hospital, on pain medication as well as sleeping pills, but at home, she woke up in the middle of the night to find herself choking on the blood that she had been drowning in. It stained every inch of her, and looking back on it, the nights of her childhood had been occupied like Lady Macbeth’s, trying in vain to wash the blood from her skin.

Jenny would sleep next to her, rubbing her back, soothing her, hands carefully anywhere but the scars on her shoulder and temple, up and down her left arm. Thirty stitches in all. It helped, some. The nightmares still came, but she would sleep until morning.

When George came home from a mission with a white shirt stained red and a bandage around his arm, she fainted. She’s never seen that shirt since. When she was nine, she fought with Jenny. She slept alone that night, and every night since. That’s when she learned which floorboards between her room and the bathroom creaked the most and how to quietly run the tap and fill a bucket of water so that her skin was reddened from scrubbing at it and not from her parents’ blood.

Lena LaMarelle knew a thing or two about being haunted. What she couldn’t figure out was what Chase Turnleaf knew about it. He had caught Adelaide the other day when Diana had returned to EAS with the body of the griffin that had been terrorizing a small Missouri town, and the time before that when Frederick had only come back as a corpse.

Thinking back on it, it was obvious. He was always there when Characters returned from Tales or missions, except when they involved bones. Then he was nowhere to be found. She didn’t realize that it was bones until Simon’s Tale. The ogre had hold of his arm when he took a step in the seven-league boots and it broke in two.

Lena was on her way to the library when they arrived, Chase almost as pale as Simon. The others made their way to the infirmary, but Chase slipped down a candle-lit corridor.

Lena didn’t think, she just followed him. He was hunched over in the middle of the hallway, shaking, but not making a sound, not crying.

She thought now, and sat next to him. The stone floor slowly leaches all the heat from her body, but she doesn’t care. Being an inventor isn’t about making cool things, it’s not even entirely about stretching the limits of magic and science, it’s about helping people.

“When I was five,” he told her, slowly and quietly, “I got locked in a tomb for three days.” Passive voice, she thought. “I-, bones-, it’s just, I can’t-” “Yeah,” she said, “I get it.”

The next day, he climbed the Tree of Hope and leaves fell on the copy of _An Incomplete History of the Fey_ that was open on her lap. She glared up at him, and he smirked down at her, and she knew nothing had changed.

Not yet.

**Author's Note:**

> 'We're going to write all the femslash and it will overtake the straight fic on ao3!' I tell Rain, and then write yet another gen fic.


End file.
